EU: Microsoft Will Not Have to Make Windows Changes

The antitrust penalties that the EU laid down on Microsoft a few months ago will not be implemented until an appeals court has a chance to decide whether the penalties should be suspended for the entire length of the appeal, which is expected to be several years. Had this step not been taken, the penalties would have gone into effect today.

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13 Comments

Are they appealing on whether MS did somethign illegal or whether or not they should have to unbundle WMP and/or pay a fine?

Assuming the latter is true, whadya think they will do to MS instead? Will there be any punishment at all?

2004-06-28 5:21 pm

Seeing as Microsoft are distributing Windows XP Starter Edition to Thailand, would this satisfy the EU Courts if it were available over here?

2004-06-28 5:22 pm

They appealed against The entire DECISION, both monetary side and practical effect ( the disbundeling).

In Europe, it is absolutely normal that the practical effects of the decision are blocked till the appeal has been decided.

Thus it is perfectly normal that the court stopped the WMV disbundeling.

That’s it^_^

What they will do? Easy, try to demonstrate that:

A) It is not possible do part Windows and WMV

B) The damage to customer would be high and irreversible

C) The fine is way too high

D) Linux is satan (Wooops! Sorry, force of habit, forget this last bit)

Point A is a pure and simple lie, point B is ridicolous point C will accepted and the fine reduced ( at least for what my experience in the field tells me)

2004-06-28 5:38 pm

Maybe the governments won’t get involved and we’ll have <gasp!> a free market!

Scandalous!

2004-06-28 5:46 pm

Nope, with a monopoly you won’t have a free market, that’s exactly the point why government involvement is necessary here… But don’t be afraid, with 50 bln in their pockets, MS won’t be punished, as they can buy any government

2004-06-28 5:55 pm

With money one can make dance monkeys:-)

2004-06-28 5:57 pm

Interesting. By the time they rule on the appeal their decision will be irrelevant to the market. The DoJ’s own case was a few years too late to matter. The fine might still sting a bit though.

2004-06-28 6:53 pm

I wish corporate criminals where treated more like human criminals. The punishment is imposed, and carried out, before you can appeal. This is standard operating practice for a multinational corporation. Microsoft will try to water down the fine, but the main reason is simply to buy time.

The more time they buy the more likely that by the time the punishment is imposed it will be irrelavant as they will have leveraged themselves another monopoly and start charging monopoly rents, extorting money from device and content producers for the use of the WMA format. At which point progress on it will come to a standstill, similar to there stopping development on IE, and the lack of any major improvements in Office planned for the next 4 years http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/06/25/HNmsbrakes_1.html

As for the free marketeers that are going to pop their heads up soon enough, well I agree free markets are good. But Microsoft operates outside of the market place due to the monopoly it has created, what the antitrust actions are trying to do is avoid the destruction of free markets and their absorbtion into a monopoly.

2004-06-28 7:06 pm

Completely free competition on computer-software doesn’t work. How would the cell-phone market be if every brand had their own closed sms-/mms-standard that wasn’t compatible with the competitors?

It’s the same way with computer-software, open standards needs to be enforced or almost everyone ends up using the same software and a monopoly is created. This ruins competition and development. It also gives too much influence and power to one company which is undemocratic.

This is even truer if you consider that Microsoft seems to take over many of the most used web-services and thereby gets the opportunity to effect the enlightenment of the people. One-sourced information is completely undemocratic. Imagin if there was only one news-paper/tv-company which chose what to let the people know about what was going on. Think that might effect opinions and votes?

The evolution the latest years has lead to a dependency on Microsoft the world can’t afford. We’re ending up being pretty much dependant on Microsoft to read our important saved text documents, see our movies or listen to our audio files. Luckily hackers have partially managed to reverse-engineer some of their formats, but there’s no guarantee it will be that easy in the future.

Aditionally the closed nature of their software gives them possibilities to do pretty much whatever they want without anyone knowing. They shouldn’t have this possibiliy even if they might not be using it to a big degree right now.

2004-06-28 9:11 pm

I don’t know where you are from, but in most European countries, appeal is a right, even for human criminals.

2004-06-28 10:48 pm

Here’s an idea: Stop buying their products!

Mostly-free market economics will take care of the rest of your problems for you.

Else stop pretending your accomplishing anything by wasting our time and money in courts that can’t make a decision without several years of propogandized debate between old judges who barely understand the situation and probably care even less than your mother.

2004-06-29 12:44 am

[Here’s an idea: Stop buying their products!]

Easier said than done, mate. What about all of us who are “forced” to work with Microsoft products at work? Eventually “coaxing” the gullible to use the same at home — for familiarity sake?